ABSTRACT

The previous chapter focused on approaches to the international economy that draw on established lines of critical analysis. It suggested that globalisation, while it may involve certain distinctive features and novel processes, can be understood in terms of the long-range historical and spatial development of capital. Globalisation appears as an extension or intensification of capitalist economic relations. This chapter, in contrast, is concerned with arguments over the new or inventive elements of economic globalisation. It begins with a sceptical view, looking to critical approaches – exemplified by the work of Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson – which put both the extent and the novelty of economic globalisation into question. Other accounts take globalisation more seriously as a distinct shift in economic organisation, arguing that it involves original elements and particular effects that require alternative modes of critical analysis. Notable here are accounts that see contemporary economies as shaped by ‘flows’ or ‘networks’ of exchange. The discussion takes up Scott Lash and John Urry’s treatment of the ‘speeding-up and stretching-out’ of social relations and economic processes through dynamic flows in time and space. It goes on to consider Arjun Appadurai’s treatment of the complex spatial organisation of a global cultural economy. Finally, it turns to Manuel Castells’ work on the emergence of a ‘network society’ which goes beyond older structures of capitalist accumulation. None of these thinkers are entirely cut adrift from earlier frameworks of analysis. In each case, for instance, Marx remains an indispensable (if not always accurate) critic of what we now call ‘globalisation’. However, these accounts all suggest that globalisation is not simply reducible to capitalist business as usual. It may, to be sure, still largely be about doing capitalist business, but the terms on which such business operates are – if not without precedent – at least without parallel in earlier phases of capitalist development. The concept of globalisation in this sense gets at something new and different in social and economic life. Before considering these arguments, however, it is worth examining the counter view.